Indoor Air Quality
Mark Bouldin, is healthy buildings expert at Johnson Controls
Understanding occupancy Mark Bouldin believes that to make healthy buildings a reality building owners and managers must focus more closely on the details of occupancy
T
he way we work has changed forever – and as businesses decide whether to move forward with remote, flexible, and hybrid working models or return to their pre-pandemic ways, the rule book for FMs and building managers has been thrown out the window. To make healthy buildings a reality, there is one key area for facilities managers and building owners to focus on: building occupancy. Gone are the days where employees sat at fixed desks, five days a week. Now, workstations will need to be resized, and room space and bookings systems overhauled, not to mention changing the way we access, experience, and benefit from our workplaces. But that really is just the start. To provide healthy and collaborative spaces for employees to work, businesses often begin with the solution. This is where we are going wrong. In fact, the core problem needs to be fully addressed first, so we can work out how best to solve it. ‘Good enough’ is no longer enough. There are nine key factors that can affect health and productivity in buildings: light, noise, security, water, moisture, dust and pests, air quality and thermal health. While organisations are always looking for ways to increase performance and occupant comfort – and now mitigate the risk of infections too – these decisions must go beyond the impact on our productivity and happiness at work. They must also take into account wider issues like carbon emissions and air pollution. Not addressing these problems creates issues down the line that can be extremely detrimental to our health. Put simply, the cycle needs to be broken: unhealthy buildings lead to an unhealthy planet, which results in unhealthy people. So, who is using your buildings and how are they using them? Where does occupancy even come in when we need to improve those nine issues? In order to improve, we
To provide healthy spaces for employees don’t start with the solution but find the core problem
need to be constantly monitoring and even predicting occupancy levels. To do so, the optimum levels of occupancy of an area need to be calculated, taking air ventilation and air change rates into account. For those already in buildings, managers must have the necessary data and technologies to understand the rooms and layouts within their buildings, especially as this changes in light of the pandemic. Then, they can allocate spaces according to the air change rate – deciding who works where based on where it will be healthiest for them. This ensures the indoor air quality is optimal depending on the
room’s occupancy, which elevates employees’ experience at work. Buildings have the most significant effect on high-thinking workers, and the right systems can increase the productivity and even the IQ of employees, benefitting businesses and their staff alike.
Variable air conditioning For developers, meanwhile, building usage must be modelled into plans from the very beginning. Variable air conditioning should be implemented and built into air conditioning design, as this provides variability depending on the occupancy of a room. Rather
than designing buildings around minimum occupancy levels, as is the current norm, developers will need to understand and cater for the maximum occupancy of a building. This small change could save lives, improving air quality for everyone. Once this is done, sensors should be installed to vary the air according to occupancy, meaning that the air quality will be at optimum levels no matter the number of people in the room or building. It’s all well and good prioritising the technologies that will enable buildings to be healthier for people – but this can’t come at the expense of a healthy planet. Both humidity and temperature have an effect on health and comfort, but we wouldn’t encourage air conditioning to be on full at all times, as this will hinder sustainability and efficiency efforts. There must be a balance. By focusing on occupancy rather than prioritising sustainability or employee experience, organisations can meet ESG and efficiency targets while also getting the most out of their employees. Here, sensors and other technologies measuring and predicting occupancy levels can do the hard work for us. To get the most from buildings, however, the data coming from these sensors and the decisions they make need to be measured and understood correctly. Using building performance indicators and matching this against staff data can prove useful, for example to monitor staff sick days in comparison to building health data, to get a better overall picture of the impact of buildings on staff. Then, if anything is wrong, it can be fixed – prioritising employee health without undue costs or sacrificing the health of the planet. Now businesses are reopening offices, the need to understand and prioritise occupancy is paramount. Organisations should revaluate how they will now use their buildings, what’s changed, and what measures are going to be put in place to ensure employee health and safety. After a year spent in our homes and outside, now is the time to take the buildings we work in seriously. If a business values its workforce, the occupancy of its buildings should be a main priority.
30 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | JUNE 2021
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